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In Memoriam Victor Borge

Updated Dec. 27, 2000 12:01 a.m. ET

V ictor Borge died in his sleep Saturday at the age of 91. But if Mr. Borge were reading this to you now, you'd be laughing. Not because it's funny, but because the Danish-born Mr. Borge had a talent for seeking out the humorous in the serious or mundane.

This is true, in a sense, of any comedian. But Mr. Borge enjoyed a special claim to that distinction. If he were reading this to you now, for example, he would not blithely pass over punctuation such as this semicolon; he'd pronounce it -- probably with a noise that was ever...